Tax Problems? An IRS Enrolled Agent

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This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Finishing Well, brought to you by cardinalguide.com, with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil, best-selling author and financial planner, helping families finish well for over 40 years. On Finishing Well, we'll examine both biblical and practical knowledge to assist families in finishing well, including discussions on managing social security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments and taxes.

Now let's get started with Finishing Well. Welcome to Finishing Well with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil. And today's show, interestingly, Tax Problems, an IRS-Enrolled Agent. So as soon as you say IRS, I now have a lot of people's attention.

I realize because I've experienced this on a firsthand level. And when it comes to that kind of thing, you know, you immediately, it changes your whole world immediately if you realize you have a tax problem. And panic begins to set in, and you finally, you know, it's almost like a wake-up call from God that, like, you need more than what you have at your disposal. And all of a sudden, Warren, you weren't so ready to ask for help and anything. All of a sudden, you realize, I cannot handle this. And all of a sudden, you know, you need some help and you need it bad.

And it's more than just with many counselors plan to succeed. You know, I was thinking about it. It's really a minute-by-minute thing if we really saw the world the way it was, because the way Jesus put it, you know, in John 15 is, you know, apart from me, you can do nothing.

And so if we can only get to that place, right, where we immediately leaned on Jesus, you know, in our moment-by-moment basis, like, man, we would be able to be so much more effective in our lives. As you will see, I think, as we have this study and what it would mean to have an agent that could help you in stuff that really would have you pulling out your hair, Hans. Well, yeah, I frankly, with all my professional credentials, I had never really paid attention to what an enrolled agent was.

I'm sure that I had read about it somewhere. And I always had them as the people on TV that, you know, were advertising that you come to us and we'll make your IRS problems go away. And I always thought about for my clients and my own business with taxes, I'm going to use a CPA. And Chris is not in competition or an enrolled agent is not in competition with a CPA or a certified public account. I guess you could say to some degree they are, because they do the same thing in terms of filing tax returns and completing tax returns. Chris is looking for a client, we have this on the video, that's incurring some pain with their taxes because he cleans all that up. I mean, that's his job and that's his skill. You know, whereas the CPA is going to do somebody's taxes like mine that are complicated, there's different ways to look at things.

So I still have a CPA doing my tax returns. And there could be someday where I will engage Chris for some particular reason. And I've actually used Chris or engaged Chris to help my son because my son was having a problem. And Chris cleared it up right away.

And it was just, it was wonderful. So what I want to do in the beginning of the show here is just tell you what an enrolled agent is, tell you a little bit about Chris, and then get clear on that. And then I want to jump into the four case studies that we're going to talk about where he really helped people. So what an enrolled agent is, is they have earned the privilege of representing taxpayers before the IRS. And this is the highest credential that the IRS awards. And the things that an enrolled agent does is tax preparations. They aid with returns that are filed by another person, like a beneficiary, an adult child, caretaker, that kind of thing. He deals with lien removal, wage garnishment, levy release, and offering compromise.

And I don't really use him for a lot of the things he normally does. So if anybody has all those problems or any of those problems, a normal taxpayer that's gotten in a bad way with the IRS, he makes a very great business of helping them out. My business is I'm considered middle age. I'm 65, you know, in our world. And older people or elder people are like 80 and 85 and 90. And that's the areas where we're serving the older portion of our clients. And many times it's the parents of our clients.

Like I even got into that with you, Robbie, where I was out calling on your dad, probably six months to a year before he passed away, helping him with something and wanting to meet him. And we get into that situation quite a bit. And what we find in some of these places, besides poor management of their money, or they really need some surgical help from us of finding all the money, finding out what it's invested in, paying all the bills, kind of getting in there and dealing with their money. Many times we just find a tax problem. And this is an area where Chris had worked with some of them before, but this is an area that we've really opened up for him, which is aiding elderly people that have tax problems that are being handled by someone else. Yeah. And just watching his demeanor as I was watching the video, which by the way is there at cardinalguide.com under taxes on the seven worries tab. But anyway, would you see him and you see his demeanor, when you got those kinds of problems, and I certainly had them when I lost the dealership, when you have those kinds of problems, this man would immediately make you feel like, oh, okay, I'm going to be okay. Right? Because when you're in that situation, it's panicky.

Well, it's terrible. And, you know, you generally get a letter in the mail and that is very eye-opening. I've certainly gotten those letters and I'm not sure if they say that on there, but you know, it has a phone number, but maybe they say, don't call. And if you try to call, you can't get anybody. And if you're lucky enough to get somebody, they're just the people that are going to put you, they're not decision makers. And it's just, it's a horrible experience trying to call them.

I mean, really the only way to resolve it is just send them the money they're asking for, because they usually make that real convenient, which most people aren't going to do. And so when Chris calls the IRS, he has a special number and because he's an IRS enrolled agent and EA, and they answer the phone with him and they listen and he gets what he needs. And it's just the speed that he's been able to solve these problems.

Some of these people that have worked on them for years, it's just amazing. And so I think the biggest thing that he brings to the equation from the IRS's perspective is he brings open and honest communication. So, because a lot of people haven't communicated very well, they haven't answered the letters, they just kind of distance themselves from the problem. And maybe the IRS has been trying to contact them. And when Chris calls them, he's communicating with them and then they can communicate back through him.

So communication. And then what he does is he gets the transcript for back as many years as you need him to. And he gets, the IRS can provide this to him, is a copy of all the 1099s, all the financial institutions and social security and everything that you get in January and February from all the different institutions where your money is, is he gets a transcript of all of that for a particular tax ID or a joint filed tax return. And he can even get copies of the returns that were filed. But in my case, where I'm helping people a lot of times, they're just the returns haven't been filed for several years or a few years. And we can't locate all that stuff.

It's just in a big pile of stuff or maybe got thrown out. And so just that, where he can get the transcript, where we know what we're dealing with from an income standpoint, it's very helpful. Yeah.

And I can't help but think that whenever whenever something like that comes up, especially if it wasn't you, it was your father or whatever relative, and all of a sudden you realize you have this tax situation you hadn't addressed, well, sin, if you even perceive you might've sinned, you didn't do nothing about this, but sin may be involved. The natural response to that is to hide, right? Just like find a fig leaf somewhere and go get behind it. And so it's just an amazing thing that you have somebody like him to come in really just like Jesus, right? And help you get some cover and help you get into uncovering what really, as we do these case studies, I think people are going to be amazed, I know I was, that a lot of times there was nothing there to even be concerned about.

Yeah. So let's go through a couple of these case studies. So we got this guy who's age 66, he's way out in a Western state. We ran into him through the YouTube channel. He's just been watching them for years. And then this guy inherited a large amount of money from his sister and 7 million of it was in one IRA.

Okay. And so he's now the beneficiary and he's obviously knows he has a tax problem. And just with distributing money out of this $7 million, because he's got to pay expenses for the estate, because he's also the executor of the estate. So I began helping him with that and going through and then he, I find out a little while into this that his sister and her husband who had died a few years earlier had not filed income tax returns since 2012.

So there must've been a little bit of dementia or something going on here. But what was interesting is they had paid the estimated tax and done the tax withholding. And so they weren't behind in their taxes. They just hadn't filed the returns. And as he's trying to close the estate, cause you want to be done with that. You can't close an estate until you sign off with a judge as the executor.

You sign off as the executor the year of death tax return. Well, I hate to jump in right here, but we got to go to a break. And so you're going to be, I think you're going to see the wonder of what God may have for you in the idea of an IRS enrolled agent. And so this whole show is it's got some wonderful show notes and there's a video where you can actually see Chris it's right there at cardinal guide.com. Again, the show is brought to you by cardinal guide.com. And there you're going to see the seven worries tab tabs and the tab for taxes is one that if you click on that, you're going to see the same show title, tax problems, IRS enrolled agent, and there you're going to see, you know, how to contact Chris, all that kind of stuff. It's all there in the show notes at cardinal guide.com. Of course, as well as Hans's book, the complete cardinal guide to planning for and living in retirement, as course as well, the contact information for Hans and Tom. And so when we come back, we're going to have a lot more of these tax problems have answers with a IRS enrolled agent.

We'll be right back. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management, LLC, abbreviated BCM, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Cardinal advisors are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.

Cardinal advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the social security administration or any other government agency. Welcome back to finishing. Well, a certified financial planner, Han Shile, and today's show is tax problems. Well, how about an IRS enrolled agent? And so we left our hero Hans. We had just gotten him involved and we got a bunch of returns back.

Yeah. So we had just gone through this guy who's 66 and inherited this large amount of money from his sister and sister and brother-in-law had not filed tax returns since 2012. They paid the taxes or at least what they thought it was withheld or estimated tax or so they were doing all that right. They just didn't file the returns. And so once we got Chris involved, he within hours had this transcript, which showed every 1099 and W-2 and all that kind of stuff, all those notices you get in January and February for these two people, all the way back from 2013 to the current year.

And just that in and of itself, then he went over that with a client and the client, they met and they talked about it. And in his conversations with the IRS, I don't know if you made a deal with them or whatever, but he only had to go back to 2018 and move forward filing. So they just took 2017 and before and just throw them out. And then he further told him that you can't get any refunds from 2020 and backwards.

So if the IRS owes you money and you didn't file it, and now you file it, you're not going to get the money back, but you still need to file it. But he was able to get the money back for 2021, 2022, 2023. And then he was hoping for 20, no, it wasn't a 24 return because she passed away in 2023. In any case, he made all this thing just great.

And finding, getting a hold of this transcript and then communicating with the IRS and then filing the returns was priceless for the client. And so I just move on to the next one. The next one is a case study where the mother, this gentleman who called me is about 50. And his mother is 78. She has dementia. They have a hired caregiver that Home Health Care Agency comes in and takes care of her. His uncle or her brother is living with her, but he's not capable of caring for her. She had no income tax filed for five years.

So there's five years backwards. So this guy got involved about a year ago and he got her to an attorney, got all the documents signed that made him the power of attorney. And he's just digging through this mess, figuring out how he's going to do this. So I refer him to Chris. Chris does the transcript.

He gets it out and all the stuff we've been hunting, knowing is gone, trying to recreate, there it all is. And she did have to pay some money, but he was glad to pay it. And then Chris negotiated some on the penalties because she has dementia and whatever. I didn't get into the details of it, but another case just for a lady that has dementia and she didn't mean any of this, she has a stellar record from there backwards.

So then the next one, we've got a fellow who's age 65. It was actually a lady who's 65 and she had done her tax filing for free at a senior center. And she's probably one of these people that shouldn't use the free tax service because she's got a little bit of a complicated return. I think she's got some rental property and a few other things.

And so the volunteer tax preparer just filled the thing out. And she didn't know that she had a problem until she started talking to somebody or watching something or something. Anyhow, she came into us and we were looking at other things that we could just see that she was owed some money back or she shouldn't have had to pay all the money she paid.

She was kind of complaining about this. So we got her to Chris. Chris looks through the whole thing and he says, the tax returns, they just weren't done properly. So Chris didn't need to get a transcript on her.

He just refiled the returns, did amended returns and got her back to the normal taxes that she'd been paying. Once again, it seems like a hill too far to climb out of, but when you got the right help with the right person, it just isn't all that difficult. But again, having the um, you know, humility to say, you know, this is over my head and the quicker you do it, right? Because those five, those, I mean, the, the fees and the penalties are what really, really just adds up so quickly and so crazily.

But somebody like Chris can certainly negotiate those as well. Right? Oh yeah. And so this fourth one is just again, a little bit, I don't know if it's comical when you start talking about $14,000, but you have 75 year old dad who has dementia, who lives in Florida, visiting his son who lives in North Carolina and they're up in the mountains somewhere. And dad goes over to the and dad goes over to casino and wins a bunch of money.

Okay. Um, just on locker, whatever, and still living in Florida. And they sent North Carolina a 1099, um, from the casino. Now he paid the federal tax that was due, but there was no Florida tax to pay because Florida doesn't have an income tax and he was living in Florida at the time. But then because he has dementia and it gets progressive, he moves to North Carolina. And once he moves to North Carolina and I don't know what he did to trigger it, but now he gets a $14,000 bill for the state income tax on these, on these casino winnings. And they're going to seize his stuff. And I mean, it was not pretty. And so he didn't owe the tax to North Carolina because he was not a resident.

He was, he didn't know it to Florida either. Anyhow, Chris was able to solve this by just getting on the phone and explaining the whole situation and the $14,000 bill went away. Wow. Can you imagine, you know, I know how I would feel, uh, if all of a sudden, you know, you went from, you know, Oh my goodness, $14,000. And it just shows you again, you know, in the right hands, um, somebody that knows what they're doing, but also has the relationship, right?

Well, it does. And, and, and it, you know, so, so what I really want to show you with this is, is that older people, retired people, and I'm talking about aged folks getting up in their mid late seventies, eighties, nineties, there's a point where many of them, they lose their sharpness. They're typically, they're the people that have been secretive about this stuff their whole life, meaning they don't share with the kids, all the facts. And when things go a bit awry, they really don't share that with the kids because they don't want the kids blessing them out.

Like they did to the kids when they were a kid for, you know, whatever, making mistakes. So they kind of hide it. And then as dementia progresses, if that's the issue here, so as dementia progresses, you know, people, older people, they start just ignoring the things that need to be done or forgetting about them, uh, making perhaps some poor decisions, but a lot of it is just apathy and it's, it just piles up and people haven't taken required minimum distributions.

They haven't, uh, done things that attend to their stocks if they own stocks and bonds, they haven't some cases paid bills. Um, things can be a mess. And the adult children get involved usually over the health things. So now somebody's got to go look after mom or dad. And then once you kind of move in or you're spending time there, you start looking at the pile of paper. And that's where a lot of people will call us.

Well, maybe Hans now, knows what to do about this. And then, you know, we've gotten to the point where this enrolled agent is just, he's a, he's another tool and it's just something that helps us in problem solving. And it's just, it's very quick. Um, you know, it's not cheap, um, relative to what he does, it's not expensive either.

I mean, it, it is, uh, a very fair value. And of course, he's going to tell people all that stuff before, before he actually, um, charges him any money. And the thing that it highlights for me, and I remember all too well, when my dad got to that point that fortunately Hans had got us to get all the paperwork that we talk about all the time, all the legal documents. And I had, you know, that power of attorney for my dad. And as soon as I started looking at his bills, when I knew that he could no longer do them, I realized like, dad, you know, what's this $14,000 alarm system you got here? And he goes, oh, that was free. I'm like, no dad. I mean, I'm looking at the, at the bill and he goes, oh no, they told me that they were just replacing the one I had with another one.

Well, you know, the people that had sold him the thing, it was a ripoff. And because I had that a power of attorney, and of course I just threatened them with elder abuse and the next thing, you know, man, that whole thing disappeared, but they wouldn't have even talked to me if I didn't have those forms in place. And again, you have the horrible situation goes good in a second, right?

Oh yeah. So this has become a fair amount. This has become a regular deal that we are doing in the context of our practice. And some of it's for our clients that have just aged to this point and they've got nobody sticking their nose into stuff. And at some point, either their children call us or they call us or we find something and we call them, but the, you know, what we are is problem solvers and we're going to get in and we're problem solvers that aren't going to take advantage of your parents, um, or your loved one or your spouse, or in any case, we're going to get in and try to solve problems. All right.

Well, again, I want to thank you all so much for listening. This show is brought to you by Cardinal guide, cardinal guide.com. And that's where you'll see the seven worries tab.

One of those are, which is taxes. You go to that one, you can see a beautiful video again with all the contact information for Chris, uh, as well as the show notes that might help you in some situation you have. Of course, if you also, while you're there, you can get Hans's book, the complete Cardinal guide to planning for and living in retirement. And of course, all the Honda, all the contact information for Hans himself.

It's all there at cardinal guide.com. Great drill Hans. Yeah. Thank you.

And God bless you. The opinions expressed by Hans Shile and guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of this radio station. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable, although it should not be relied upon as such.

Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated or not guaranteed past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results. Any strategies mentioned may not be suitable for everyone. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for you before acting on any information mentioned, please consult with a qualified tax or investment advisor to determine if it's suitable for your specific situation.

Finishing whale is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject covered. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, abbreviated BCM, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Cardinal Advisors are independent of each other.

Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Cardinal Advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. We hope you enjoyed Finishing Whale brought to you by cardinalguide.com. Visit cardinalguide.com for free downloads of this show or previous shows on topics such as social security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes, as well as Hans' best-selling book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement and The Workbook. Once again, for dozens of free resources, past shows, or to get Hans' book, go to cardinalguide.com. If you have a question, comment, or suggestion for future shows, click on the Finishing Whale radio show on the website and send us a word. Once again, that's cardinalguide.com. Cardinalguide.com. This is the Truth Network.